Sunday, January 3, 2010

"The little village of Obscurity is remarkable only for its unremarkableness."


In order to clean up my TBR pile before my copy of the new Jasper Fforde novel (Shades of Grey) arrives this week, I decided to read his second Nursery Crime book, The Fourth Bear. This was a great follow-up story and I felt more invested while reading it than during the first book. This novel was balanced between character development and plot in a satisfying way.

Our hero, Detective Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crimes Division, faces up against domesticated bears, The Gingerbread Man and violent cucumber thieves all while being suspended for a debacle surrounding the Big Bad Wolf and his poor treatment of Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. Add to this Jack's own domestic issues and some violent new neighbors, Punch and Judy, and this might be the hardest few weeks of his life.  Still, he's the best man for the job and might be the only hope for a peaceful and safe Reading.

I really enjoyed this book. I am still trying to balance my reading choices with more comedy and this was a great choice after a few dark and heavy reads. Jasper Fforde is such an incredibly smart writer and I'm hoping to get to his local appearance here on Friday night!

Licking the proverbial platter clean,
K


Support our site and buy The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime on Amazon or find it at your local library. We bought our own copy.

4 comments:

  1. Loved this book! Love all his books and cant wait to get my hands on a copy of shades of grey.

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  2. This does sound like a fun one. I've only read one book by Jasper Fforde (one of his Thursday Next novels), which I really liked. I need to read more by him.

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  3. This just sounds like a fun series ... have fun with the new book!

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  4. Not a blogger - I got my copy yesterday and I almost just dropped what I was reading at the time to start it! But I'm being good. :)

    Feline - If you like one Fforde, you will like them all. They all have the same feel without being too similar.

    Jenners - Thanks!

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